


Now We're in the Ring and We're Coming for Blood

by lit_chick08



Series: The Only Crime is To Lose [5]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Human Trafficking, I Don't Even Know, Organized Crime, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-03
Updated: 2013-10-03
Packaged: 2017-12-28 06:52:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/989036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lit_chick08/pseuds/lit_chick08
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her brother sold her to Drogo to get back what the Baratheons stole.  But she has outlived them all, and now it's her turn to get revenge for what was done to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now We're in the Ring and We're Coming for Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "Glory and Gore" by Lorde

The windows of the limo are tinted. It makes it impossible to see inside, which Daenerys likes, but it also dims the light, which she likes less. Her life is lived in darkness; she likes to let in what little light she can when possible.

Jorah says it is a necessity. There was another attempt on her life last week. If it hadn’t been for Strong Belwas, she wouldn’t even be here to complain about her car. Missandei told her Daario decided to send a message to those who sent the assassins; a bagful of heads was more of a message than Dany would have preferred but, then again, it isn’t as if Daario asked her permission.

Barristan doesn’t approve, of course. He thinks her lover is without honor and sullies her name. Dany doesn’t know if he’s entirely wrong. When she finally returns to the States, when she takes back what is hers, she certainly isn’t going to allow Daario to control it with her. But he is fine for now and he serves his purpose. Even her history is not enough to open some doors when it comes to the men who operate in Russia’s underworld.

She has lived in Moscow longer than any other place in her life, but Dany will never be able to look on it as home. When her mother fled to Europe with Viserys, still pregnant with her, she couldn’t take much with her, but she _had_ brought a photo album. It was through that Dany learned what their family home looked like, what her _family_ looked like. By the time she was born, almost everyone was dead. Robert Baratheon killed her brother Rhaegar, Tywin Lannister’s hitmen massacred her sister-in-law, niece, and nephew, and Jaime Lannister murdered her father in his own living room. Even her mother didn’t last more than an hour after giving birth to her. All there had been was Viserys, only nine-years-old, and old Willem, who helped them escape to England.

Viserys was seventeen when Willem died, and they were forced out of his home by his family. Robert Baratheon still had a hefty contract out on their heads, and Willem’s family wasn’t willing to risk their lives for two children. Life became a string of increasingly dirtier hostels and selling what few things they had left across Europe; the day Viserys sold their mother’s engagement ring so they could eat was most definitely the low point and how they ended up with Illyrio in Greece.

Even now Dany didn’t understand why a rich Greek man gave a damn about the displaced children of a dead American gangster, but Illyrio swore he would help them. Viserys didn’t even ask how. By then, the Targaryen curse was starting to appear in him, the paranoia and delusions of grandeur increasing daily.

She was fourteen when they sold her to Drogo. Oh, Illyrio didn’t call it that, but Dany knew now that was exactly what it had been. He brought the terms to Viserys, who signed them without a second thought, his eyes too full of fantasies about King’s Landing and Dragonstone and revenge. What did it matter to him that to get those things, he had to sell his thirteen-year-old sister to the most feared man in the Russian mob?

Drogo’s expertise was buying and selling women. There was big money to be made in trafficking women, and Drogo got rich doing it. Sometimes he kept the ones he deemed most useful for himself; Irri and Doreah, the only friends Dany had during those terrible first few months, were two such women. They taught her the language, the customs; they were the ones who explained what the complicated labyrinth of tattoos on Drogo’s body meant.

“He’s killed many men to get where he is,” Doreah explained one evening when she shared Dany’s bed. In the beginning Drogo ordered she never be alone; he wasn’t so much afraid she’d run as she’d kill herself, and Drogo hated to lose an investment. “They say he’s killed entire villages.”

“That can’t be true.”

Doreah smiled at how naïve she was. “He might exaggerate about some things but not that. The man who sold me to him, he tried to make Drogo pay more for us than they agreed. He slit his throat and tore his tongue out of it.”

Viserys didn’t care how scared she was, how many bruises appeared on her skin, how painful it was for her to walk or sit. So long as Drogo kept promising to help them get back what once belonged to the Targaryens, Viserys would turn a blind eye to anything.

“Be useful!” Viserys would order, squeezing her wrist so tightly, Dany could feel the bones rubbing together. “Make him happy and then we can go home.”

Dany smirks in disgust as she recalls her brother’s words, pedestrians flying past her as they drive towards her apartment. _Make him happy_ …As if a thirteen-year-old girl had any way of knowing what that meant, especially when it came to a man over twice her age.

Jorah came to them then, swearing his allegiance. Viserys loved him because he was American and spoke English; her brother couldn’t master even the simplest Russian phrases and it infuriated him, the way Dany picked it up. Back then Jorah was the only man in her life who seemed to care how she felt, and even now she knows she wouldn’t have survived the first year without him, Irri, and Doreah.

“Missandei says there’s a man at the penthouse wanting to speak to you,” Jorah reports, breaking Dany’s reverie. She turns her head to look at him and sees he’s staring intently at his phone. “Are you expecting someone?”

“No. Did he give a name?”

Jorah squints his eyes, bringing his phone nearer his face, and Dany bites the inside of her lip to keep from grinning. Her old bear might be many things, but technologically savvy is not one of them. “He says he’ll only speak to you.”

Dany shrugs, already bored. This happens a few times a month, some boy all puffed up with bravado wanting to impress her and demanding an audience. Missandei knows what to do, which is to have Barristan and Belwas hold him until she arrives. Daario was one of those men once, and though she knows they judge her for it, Daario is exactly what she has needed.

There was no choice with Drogo about anything. On her fourteenth birthday when she discovered she was pregnant, Dany knew then there was no escape. Drogo treated her better then, convinced she carried a boy, but her circumstances were the same. A prisoner was a prisoner no matter how nice their cell was. The baby was the final lock that would keep her shackled to Drogo forever, and what was more, Viserys knew it too.

Her brother was insane and often incompetent, but he knew what happened once sons were born. Suddenly Viserys saw the Targaryen dynasty slipping away from him, taken instead by Drogo and his son, and it pushed him over the edge. It was the only explanation for why he drew the knife and held it to her belly in front of Drogo and his men.

No matter how angry and disgusted Viserys had made her over the years, no one deserved to die the way he did. She never knew what Drogo’s men did with his body, and that more than anything haunted her.

With Viserys gone, Dany knew the only chance she ever had of getting back to the States and potentially reclaiming anything was through the child she carried. She was fourteen, alone in the world, and she had no choice but to quickly learn how to survive on her own.

Drogo didn’t like her to know anything about the business, but Dany was smart. She knew the majority of his money came from buying and selling girls, but he also sold heroin and guns. Every time a business associate came, Dany memorized his face, his name, and what he sold. She learned from Drogo’s complaints who was worthless or a cheat and which ones he trusted implicitly. Most importantly Dany learned which ones had ties to which American crime families. The Greyjoys had the most foreign connections in the port cities and smuggled girls in their ships; the Tyrells had some sort of connection to Ireland Dany couldn’t fully figure out, and the Baratheons owned property in England. Dany absorbed the information like a sponge, saving it for when it would be most useful.

A woman named Mirri destroyed the relative peace of her life. Her daughter owed one of Drogo’s men money for drugs and hadn’t paid. They murderer Mirri’s family, and they only left Mirri alive by accident. And it was because of that Mirri planted a bomb in their car.

Dany didn’t remember much of the day. She dimly recalled the sound of the blast, a flash of light, and that was it. When she woke, she was in the hospital, Drogo was on life support with no brain function, and her son, delivered prematurely by emergency cesarean, was stillborn. Jorah took her from the hospital, Irri and Doreah nursing her back to health. And when her incision healed, Dany’s first mission was to find Mirri and make her pay for what she did.

Drogo was her jailer, the baby boy her shackle, but they were _hers_ and no one took from a Targaryen without paying.

Only a handful of Drogo’s men stayed with her. They hunted down Mirri with efficiency, delivering her to Dany bound and trussed like an animal. Dany made sure to look her in the eye before setting her aflame, the preferred method of her long-dead father to deal with enemies.

Rakharo gave her the first of her tattoos that night, markings she earned with fire and blood. When her enemies came for her the next time, Dany wanted them to know _she_ was just as dangerous.

Her operation wasn’t like Drogo’s. She did not sell girls and would not do business with those who did. Her crew, well over 8,000 men now, wiped out entire gangs who tried to traffic girls in her territory, and it put a massive target on her head. Huge amounts of money were being lost due to her ban on selling girls, and Jorah often told her she was courting unnecessary trouble by interfering in the trade. And it was because of that Dany would never fully trust Jorah.

Ned Stark ordered Jorah’s death for selling people to traffickers, and while Dany regretted being unable to kill Ned Stark herself, she respected his stance. A seller would never understand what it did to a person to be sold.

Her apartment building is one of the most heavily guarded buildings in the city. As Dany climbs out of the limo, she sees Grey Worm standing near the entrance, stone faced as always. He and his companion were part of a shipment of people Dany “purchased” through fire, granting them their freedom or the chance to work for her. She does not doubt Grey Worm would take a bullet for her, and she knows that should make her feel powerful but it doesn’t. All she wants is peace, but she isn’t so naïve as to believe such a thing exists anymore.

The penthouse floor is guarded even more fiercely than the building’s entrance, and Dany smiles when she sees Daario and Strong Belwas flanking an unfamiliar man seated on a couch. Daario looks at her with the same hunger he always does, and Dany wonders not for the first time if he’s hungrier for her companionship or her power. Daario always carries two daggers, and Dany is acutely aware that he could plant one in her back as easily as he could kiss her.

Missandei lingers near the doorway, eyeing the strange man warily. Her little assistant doesn’t care for Daario, and, as he was the last to approach them like this, Dany understands her reticence. She may not appreciate Missandei’s judgment of her choices, but her life hasn’t been any easier than Dany’s. Certain sins are much easier to forgive.

There is no chance she’ll take this new man to her bed. He is hardly taller than she is when he stands, stocky in a way that hints at inactivity, and there is nothing handsome or charismatic in his bearing. In dark jeans and a white t-shirt that contrasts nicely with his warm brown skin, he could be anyone. Whoever he is, she definitely does not remember ever meeting him.

“I would introduce myself, but you obviously know who I am. You told Missandei we have business?”

“We do.”

His lack of accent surprises her. “American?”

“Like you.”

She doesn’t sound American. Learning to speak in over a half-dozen countries has given her a garbled sort of accent that makes her origins impossible to place. Though she’d never say it out loud, she often tries to imitate Jorah’s accent, hoping she sounds more American.

“I’m not looking for new contractors – “

“Someone kidnapped Jaime Lannister two days ago and send his hand to his father. They’re asking for three million in ransom. Was it you?”

Dany gasps, too stunned to cover her reaction. After a moment she manages, “If I had Jaime Lannister, there wouldn’t be enough left of him to send to his father.” She narrows her violet eyes. “Who are you?”

“I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself. I’m Quentyn Martell.”

“Martell,” she echoes. “As in Elia Martell?”

“She was my aunt.”

Dany nods. “Then it would seem we _do_ have business.”

Gesturing for Quentyn to follow her, Dany moves towards her office, catching the reflections of those behind her in a mirror.

Daario is furious, Jorah is uncertain, Quentyn is stone faced, but it is Missandei’s face that most intrigues her. It is hopeful, anticipatory, and as the men file into her office, Dany pauses, catching Missandei’s wrist.

“Why are you so happy?” she murmurs.

Missandei grins, warm and free. “Because we’re finally going to America.”

Suddenly Dany can’t stop smiling either.


End file.
